Ubuntu is the Linux Usability Leader - page 2

More Opinions Than People

May 7, 2009

By
Bruce Byfield

A Technical Reaction

When users see a notification, many are probably more focused on the message than on
its format. For such users, the change in notifications is likely to go entirely
unnoticed, and therefore not be an issue at all.

With users, though, the changes are harder to ignore, because they affect how an
application should be written. A blogger called Glyph details
some of the problems. For example, all notifications that require actions must become the
active window; you cannot, as Glyph wanted, have a notification that required action but
did not steal the focus. Similarly, you could not keep a notification on screen until the
time an action was required without having it constantly reappear.

Glyph also complained about the lack of formatting, including links in the
notifications, and the inability to move notifications from the upper right corner of the
desktop. He did acknowledge that the Indicator icon helped a bit, but added that it was
largely undocumented and just as constraining as the notification standards.

Ironically, Glyph noted, the new notification standards were based on the first
version of OS X's notification tool Growl -- apparently without anyone noticing that many
of the feature they removed have been added to later versions of Growl.

Nor are the new standards well-documented, according to Glyph. "I want an API that I
can call, not a picture of a window I need to re-create myself," he writes.

Community Reactions and Over-Reactions

Glyph's comments are polite, and end by saying that the new system is an improvement
over the old, and should evolve over time. Others, however, are less concerned about the
technical details than with alleged violations of the way that members of the free
software community are supposed to interact.

A particularly scornful
reaction comes from a blogger called Ryan. Referring to the changes as a "crapfest"
and "foistware," Ryan suggests that the situation reveals a lack of dedication to the
community.

"Mark Shuttleworth has given kind of an impression that he's not some dictator over
the project who uses veto power and thugs to muscle in whatever he damned well pleases,"
Ryan writes. Then referring to Brainstorm, a
kind of suggestion box for Ubuntu, he continues, "If this is the case though, there would
have been some kind of vote or some Brainstorm blueprint, or at least making it appear
like they care about your feedback."

Ryan goes on to explain that, with Ubuntu insisting on implementing the changes
itself, rather than in GNOME, the distribution has effectively forked GNOME. As a result,
developers will either have to do some work twice, or choose to develop only for one
version of GNOME -- and, given Ubuntu's popularity, he worries that the version they
choose will be Ubuntu's.

"This reminds me a lot of what Microsoft did during the browser wars," he writes.
"They made IE incompatible so that developers would start *only* bothering to correctly
support them. . .what I believe Ubuntu is doing is adding an extra hurdle just because
they know they can. They want to make it harder on developers to know how their app will
behave outside of Ubuntu. . . . it's just patently unethical too, a bid to manipulate
developers into not caring about how their stuff works on other distros, this is just a
beachhead and they'll be back with more pointless/stupid changes to come. Embrace,
Extend, Extinguish."

An Innovation Too Fast?

Such criticisms should not be exaggerated. Usability is something everyone thinks they
know something about, and rarely do. Moreover, many users sound delighted with the new
notifications.

However, while users and developers are often the same people in free software,
developers can still be a separate community in free software. No matter how well Jaunty
is received in general, you have to wonder whether, in his hurry to answer his own
challenge, Shuttleworth has made a major mis-step, not only technically but socially.

Accusations of Microsoft behavior often fly around too easily in the free software
community. They are a sort of equivalent to comparing opponents to Adolf Hitler in other
online discussion. However, in this case, the appearance of high-handedness makes the
comparison understandable, if hardly excusable. Both Ubuntu community developers and
GNOME developers in general seem to have been presented with the notification changes
fully developed, with little room offered for their input.

Perhaps, too, the comparison has revived the community's latent distrust of business.
Some in the community cannot forget that Shuttleworth is primarily an entrepreneur, nor
that his millions have helped Ubuntu to its prominent position as much as its concrete
achievements. But, until now, this distrust has had very little to focus on, because
Shuttleworth and Ubuntu have shown every sign of respecting community standards.

So far, the grumblings are soft and far from universal. However, the real question is
whether Ubuntu's future usability improvements will add fuel to them, and force what is
most likely a temporary fork into becoming a more permanent one, especially if
Shuttleworth's agenda conflicts with the changes to be implemented in GNOME 3.0 over the
next few years. Either GNOME developers could refuse to accept Ubuntu's changes, Ubuntu
could decide to implement the changes alone, or, more likely, both could happen at
once.

In any of these situations, what's most important could easily be lost: the fact that
Ubuntu's emphasis on usability, although perhaps not always implemented well, is
something that the free desktop needs to take it to the next level. And if that is
forgotten, then who is to blame becomes irrelevant. We will all be poorer for the lapse
from common sense.